Fears over Westbury waste centre’s chimney

Questions have been raised over a multi-million pound renewable energy centre which could be built in Westbury.

Councillors attending the highways, planning and development committee meeting on Monday raised factors that will be considered in a consultation requested by Hills Group Ltd, which is behind the project.

The meeting was chaired by Russell Hawker, Wiltshire councillor for Westbury West, who said councillors were still absorbing details of the plans released last week.

It will be sited in three buildings up to 20 metres high, but Hills is yet to release figures on the height of the chimney.

Cllr Hawker said: “The height of the chimney needs to cater for the possibility that we could get plume grounding towards the top of the hill running up by Newtown and Studland Park.

“It is something that definitely needs to be examined.

“We would expect the height to be at least higher than the top of the houses [on the hill by Newtown and Studland Park] which means higher than Lafarge.

“This is potentially an enormous chimney.”

The centre will use a process called gasification, which heats converted waste, processed at the existing Northacre Resource Recovery Centre, up to 1,400 degrees centigrade and converts it to gas to drive a turbine.

The second point raised at the meeting was what the exact chemical composition of the emissions would be.

“Technology is much better now,” said Cllr Hawker. “It’s bound to be more filtered than before but we still want to know what is coming out.”

The final key point raised was lorry movement and which routes the lorries would be taking to the proposed centre.

Cllr Hawker added: “I am in no doubt there will be a number of objections to this in due course.”